Thread: MSVC++ Versions

If you can get the Standard version of .NET (which doesn't have the optimizing compiler) for $100, and you can get the optimizing compiler for free (which doesn't have the GUI), and you can change your IDE to use whatever compiler you want, can't you just get the standard version and use the optimizing compiler for the same price??

yea the standard version of Visual Studio .NET, if you go to half
price books (do a google search, i think halfpricebooks.com is the
link but im to lazy to check it right now) but for 40 bucks or so
you can get a copy of standard VS.NET with a pretty decent
book and 3 disk of MSDN. Id say thats pretty cheap.

Just out of curiousity, does anybody know what the differences are between Express and Standard? I figure they probably remove features but does it come with a license that allows you to sell your finished program? Because I had heard it didn't allow that with the academic but that version always seemed to be just a standard version.

>> Just out of curiousity, does anybody know what the differences are between Express and Standard?
If you're just looking for C/C++ tools to write and debug applications, there is very little difference. Part of what's missing from the Express verison is all the wizards and integrated tools for supporting MFC and ATL.

The Express download is Beta software and will cost $$$ when it is no longer Beta. Part of using Beta software is that it "is for testing and evaluation purposes only" and "you cannot publicly deploy any applications you create with the beta". Those quotes are from the Express products Frequently Asked Questions

>> can't you just get the [Visual C++] standard version and use the [free] optimizing compiler ...
Makes sense to me, I'll be trying that out with VC++ 6.0 Enterprise when I get some time. Like CornedBee mentioned, the bigest hurdles are probably compiler switches that are no longer in line with the Visual Studio project settings UI.

There are lots of freely available IDE's out there and I would investigate the possibilities of using gdb as a debugger. The MS compiler is capable of generating different debug-info formats and gdb can certainly understand more than one.

gg